Drone News

While it is common for companies to take a product, tweak the design slightly, slap a new logo on it and sell it for double the original cost, we would not expect that in the case of drones. However, there are cases of an ordinary drone being “upgraded” and sold at a much higher price than someone who knows drones would expect to pay. Check out this article about how a high end fashion...

Yuneec announced the H520 at CES in Las Vegas this year and many people are quite excited about the features of this soon-to-be-released drone. First, it is a hexacopter with the capacity to fly with only five of its six motor running in an emergency. It has three options for cameras, each of which is designed for a different task. And it has a bright orange body that is designed to be highly visi...

In France, a company called Elistair Tethered Solutions offers a live, real time look into how traffic is flowing, where congestion happens and many more data points. A single drone operator is able to control the flight for hours at a time because the drone receives power from the tether, which means there is not the usual concern with short battery life. The tethered drone uses DataFromSky traff...

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has developed a system that let you customize your own drone. The system allows you to customize the size, shape, colors, and other specifications of a drone from a template and then actually create that drone based on those specifications. “To our knowledge, this the first system that allows non-experts to design and build their own custom drone,” s...

Everyone knows about the obvious use cases for drones in ever day life. Aerial photography, racing, delivery vehicles, and of course, military applications. However, there is a “long tail” of drone uses that are not normally discussed or very obvious at first glance. Building inspections, mapping, safety, maintenance, and more. The media loves to tell stories about drones that are doin...

Last fall when DJI announced the DJI Mavic Pro, they were not prepared for the demand that the little drone would create. And they were specifically not prepared for the shipping and supply chain issues they would encounter while trying to meet the high demand. This led to some bad publicity and frustrated customers. Today, the Mavic is beginning to ship regularly and people are receiving their or...

Professional drone pilot “B” from the DRONR Youtube channel discusses how he got started, working with clients, and the fundamentals of becoming a professional drone pilot for hire. B’s channel DRONR is a great resource for drone news, reviews and information related to the hobby and industry we love. We highly recommend checking out DRONR: http://bit.ly/2aaztuD

SkyPixel, a web site that showcases amazing drone footage and photos has announced its picks of the best photos of 2016…all shot from drones! The images are beautiful and amazing. SkyPixel runs the contest each year and selects the winners based on different categories of photographers – from amateur to enthusiast to professional. You can see the winning photos and descriptions here. h...

Generally we would not recommend flying powerful FPV racing drones at high speeds while sipping on an alcoholic beverage. And we still don’t recommend it. However, while watching other people fly at high speeds during televised Drone Racing League events, it sound like a good plan! Budweiser has announced that it will be sponsoring the Drone Racing League. This is a major milestone for the D...

Most of today’s drones use front facing or downward facing cameras to detect and avoid obstacles. These drones are able to avoid large, bulky objects like buildings, cars, and usually, people. However, to be very accurate and effective, different technologies must come into play. One such technology is being developed by a company called Echodyne, a Seattle, Washington based start up with in...

As we all know, the GoPro Karma was recalled last fall due to issues with it’s reliability and it’s sometimes falling out of the sky. GoPro has recently announced that the issue has been resolved. The issue had to do with the battery’s placement causing the drone to instantly shut down and drop like a rock from the sky. Following the struggle of the public relations nightmare thi...

Ilhan Bae is a researcher and futurist who has done something pretty amazing. He has put Kubi telepresence robot on top of a DJI S1000 drone. The result is a robotic being that can move its arms, interact with people and fly from place to place. Bae says that “it may look impractical to install heavy robot parts on a light drone, but the benefits of telepresence via a flying drone overwhelm the re...